The Choprical Fish: a Human Powered Party Bike

Step 28 Human Power your Party Bike!

Integrating Human Power wasn't on my radar screen when I started working on the Choprical Fish, my shopmate Nate and friend Gabe's enthusiasm was infectious.

I had my welder weld a pivot point for a motor that swings to hit the tire as it spins. This only happens when the bike is up on the beefy center stand.

A 23 farad ultracapacitor from Maxwell Technologies buffers the charge so that you can stop pedaling for a few seconds and not have the music and lights turn off. As you can see in the video, the battery system and the human power system are independent on this party bike.

When you integrate human power, you have to deal with the fact that the human pedaling the party bike can pedal too hard or too slow. If the pedal too slow, the amp and other devices will sound distorted or turn off. If they pedal too hard, you can risk ruining the ultracapacitor.

At the very least you need some kind of display that shows people what they're currently generating. Better still, you'd create a shunt that dumps excess voltage into a heat sink (fog blaster?)

Comments

[bassbindevil]

Was there a reason you didn't just use the generator to recharge the battery?  No need for a capacitor, and you could generate "free" power by engaging the generator when coasting downhill.  The only electronics you should need to implement this would be a diode (rectifier) to isolate the generator from the battery.   Use a 25A 50V rated rectifier, which should be enough overkill to be safe.